Triathlon swimming made easy Read Online Free PDF Page A

how to propel themselves better and teaching them how to be more slippery, which in 1989 was a highly experimental art. I was clear on one thing: I would measure my success as a teacher by how much my students improved their SL.
    And, from the start, I noticed a striking phenomenon. When I was successful in teaching swimmers to stroke better, I would see a modest improvement in their SL. When I was successful in teaching them to pierce the water, I would see dramatic improvement. Norton Davey, one of the few 70+ athletes to complete an Ironman, was a prime example. At a TI workshop in Chicago in 1994, it took him 36 strokes to swim 25 yards as we videotaped him on Saturday morning. By Sunday afternoon he had increased his SL by 100%, taking only 18 strokes, but the pushing-water part of his stroke, as shown on underwater video, was virtually unchanged. His body position, though, had changed from about a 30-degree "uphill" posture on Saturday to very nearly horizontal on Sunday. Countless experiences such as that got my attention in a hurry, and we soon began to devote more and more of our limited teaching time to "slippery swimming."

    How Many Strokes Should I Take?
    The simplest way to monitor your SL is to make a habit of counting your strokes, at all speeds, and on virtually every length. That will give you a basis for evaluating whether you're spending your precious pool time concentrating on things that will really help you swim faster or more easily. You'll find there's not a single number that represents your "best" stroke count. You'll have a stroke count range — fewer on shorter repeats and/or when you're swimming slower; more when you're going farther or faster.
    Your primary goals should be to:
    1) gradually lower that range;
    2) reduce the difference between its top and bottom; and
    3) do the majority of your training in the lower half of your range. If your range was 17 to 24 SPL last year and 14 to 20 this year (or if you can swim faster at each point in that 17-to-24 range), stay the course; you're doing something right.
    But at what point have you gone far enough? Now and again, we'll see a workshop pupil proudly swim for the video camera on Saturday morning in a very low count, perhaps 12 strokes, because they've read my first book and taken its message to heart, working unswervingly to shave strokes. But their 12-stroke lap is anything but efficient. It's typically lurching and nonrhythmic, and there's a whole lot of kicking going on.
    I'll take the blame for that, having failed in that book to make clear that the goal of our instruction is to help you reach your optimal, not maximal SL. We don't want you straining to reach the lowest count you can squeeze out. We want you to free yourself to swim at an efficient count that you can maintain with relatively little effort, and relatively little kicking. These swimmers would actually have been better off with a relaxed and rhythmic 15 strokes than the 12 they were straining to hold.
    The key to that freedom, ease, and control is balance, the one skill of swimming that is non-negotiable...but also incredibly rare. Let's get straight to it.

Chapter 5
    Balance: Becoming Fishlike Starts Here
    If there's one moment at every TI workshop that can be described as an epiphany, it's when our students first realize they can float — feel effortlessly supported by the water — just by changing their body position. For most, this is a total revelation — so accustomed are they to fighting "that sinking feeling" with every stroke. That sensation, created by a drill so simple that 90 percent of our students master it in 10 minutes, is so transforming that one of our alums exulted in an e-mail to me, "I've been swimming twice a day since the workshop because I'm afraid if I wait too long I'll have forgotten how it feels to be balanced. Every time I get in I pray, 'please, please, feel like it did last time.' I've never felt anything like it; I'm literally just floating